Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 453
Lavin ignored the glares of hate that followed him. He
and his honor guard of two were safe, he knew. Galas would
never let him come to harm. So as he walked he did not look at
the soldiers ranked on either side of the narrow courtyard that
led to the citadel, but cast his gaze above ground level to
examine the damage his siege engines had caused to the
buildings. The defenders had hung bright banners across the
worst of it to frustrate such scrutiny; the festive cloth looked
incongruous against blackened stonework, above the pinched
faces of grim soldiers.
He felt more optimistic than he had in weeks. Galas had
agreed to parley. Now that her situation was hopeless, she was
finally seeing reason. This madness had to stop, and there was
no reason it should end with deaths, hers included. All the
while she hid in her fortress, and he threw men and stones at
the walls, Lavin had been in an agony of fear that some one of
those stones would find her, or that dysentery would run
through the palace, or her own people assassinate her to escape.
He couldn’t live with the thought.
But he couldn’t live with the thought of anyone else
being in charge of this siege, either. She would lose; he had
always known that. There had never been any question of his
joining her cause, because all he could do for her was delay the
inevitable. He might win her admiration and love, but she
would be brought down at last, and he wouldn’t be able to stop
it.
This way, the outcome was in his hands. And though she
might hate him, this way he might save her.
In his late-night conversations with Hesty, Lavin had lied
about all these things. He had claimed to hate Galas, and the
fact that he hated the things she had done leant credence to his
words. But it hurt him to talk so, and he often wondered if